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WINE May Change To LGPL
isolation wrote to us about the proposal to change the Wine license to LGPL. Jeremey's got his ideas and reasons in the e-mail there, and it makes sense - Jeremy's a smart guy. There's a call for opinions on this as well, so read through it, and offer commentary.
If it is a change that will protect the future of Wine but keeping in the spirit of open-source software then fair enough.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
You know, I actually agree with you (for as lot of cases) I meet loads of people who are 'dyslexic' but actually it just means they can't spell. I've met genuinely dyslexic people, and it's a whole different kettle of fish.
BTW, I've noticed that Outkast are obviously trolls, examine the evidence:
I'm sorry Miss Jackson
w00t!
I am 4 r34L...
Looks pretty clear cut to me
read through it, and offer commentary
Or don't read through it, and offer blistering and incoherent screeds about the inherent superiority of the GPL.
It's your option, and this _is_ Slashdot, after all.
--saint
Im a bit curious, does anyone know what that "other propiatory" stuff he is talking about, but cannot reveal any further, is ? It sounds to me that we could be talking Lindows, but I dont know that much about Lindows to know how it "emulates/wraps" Win32 API.
Any other ideas ?
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
But wine will always be a bad idea regardless of the license. You can never keep up with MS changing and adding to the API all the time. You have to change with every new release of popular programs (e.g. Office). And it doesn't do too well as a porting lib for win programs because u still have to have code to be bug compatible w both systems (win32 and wine). It even breeds such horrible children like the horribly insecure Lindows.
I believe open source projects must try to use the standard and most used licences like xGPl ones or from FSF. This will help the ouside world view our community as a whole body and not a big mess(like I heard one day from a CEO).
Thank you.
José Paulo Papo, from Brazil
"Learning, learning, learning - that is the secret of jewish survival" -- Ahad A'Ham
This is exactly why copyleft is IMPORTANT to keeping free and open source projects free and open and why the X.11 or other so called "commercial exploitation friendly" licenses are indeed very bad. I am glad to see the people behind WINE understand this although it is a shame they had to learn this lesson as a result of abuse by others.
All hail the power of the [L]GPL!
Where can I find the Backslashdot headquarters?
The owls are not what they seem
I dont think that stands for the Ladies GPL. Can someone post some info on what this LGPL is?
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
No ones linked to them yet this article and this article give a bit more information on what LGPL is and why there is an issue.
Although I understand the reasoning this sort of issue is what will drive companies away from adopting Linux. I'm already finding that I have to read the small print for every damn piece of software/code that I use just in case I end up using something which I will have to pay for or be prohibited from using if I use it commercially. Pain in the backside.
It seems to me, that they really want Wine contributors to express their opinion, not the general public. They might be interested to hear from users, too, but it doesn't state that anywhere.
...I don't know if I like this or not...I prefer to license my wine from france, myself...
I think its important to know what "with some recent events I cannot disclose" is exactly. Wine is great stuff and its been getting better. I have not contributed to wine publically because of its current liscence. And for once, knowing the windows world as well as the linux I think I could actuallly make a decent contribution, but I dont want code I freely provide ending up in LinDows, or Transgamings WineX9I know it is different, for the moment but how long ?)
Any liscence change could not suoperceede the liscence under which the existing code tree was obtained, so development into a proprietary product could contine on those note, is a smart guy he knows this, thats what scares me, what does he know or see in the future of Wine that could endanger it at this point, Corel trying to say its all their code now because he is their employee (this is an example, dont spaz)
Its funny how most of the people wanting to "commercialize Wine, have ended up with their code avaiable, WHY ? Its just not ready for prime time as a proprietay product on its own they still NEED developemt beyoned their internal capabilities, Jeremy must know this too......
Once agaian what looms on the horizon for Wine ?
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 07:51:04PM -0500, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
:-) Other scenarios I can imagine: drivers for hardware -
> Yeah, that could work. But I still don't understand your objections about
> the proprietary drivers: LGPL would work just fine with that. What's your
> concern?
Look at the copy protection stuff that transgaming have added to their
tree: they licensed it and thus quite likely can't publish the source
for this - but I still want to see this in the binary only releases
they make
think of a company that wants to port their software to Linux via wine
but continue using a dongle or something like that: the dongle code
is quite likely to go into the kernel itself (and may need some support
for that by the wineserver).
Ciao
Jörg
-----------
PS Since I have been modded down on previous posts, I have been slowing learning how to be a good Karma citizen from other examples on Slashdot.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
For those unfamiliar, you can read the LGPL at the following URL:
t ml
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.h
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Not really.
W2K and WinXP are already as stable -- if not more stable -- than the current 2.4.x kernel series.
The owls are not what they seem
after reading the email and then finding the wine license it makes a lot of sense to me why they would want to switch to LGPL. As someone who works with computers and has seen the myriad of license and contractual negotiations that are caused by corporate use of software, i've always wondered how free or open software would survive, and always had thought the apache and lgpl licence schemes gave the most advantage to software companies in promoting/using said software while still making a dollar with their enhancements.
No matter what we want, if there is a company behind a product, it needs to make money.
What does this help with? LGPL (library, I am assuming) would allow all of the propriatary software to be ported via wine, but would force everyone to keep wine itself open. I personally think this is a good idea, because from my reading of the current wine licence (which was a while back, so it is a bit fuzzy) it seemed a bit BSDish (which isn't neccessaraly bad), but if you are trying to keep wine open (iow, no TCP/IP stack sniching, or anything of the sort) the LGPL seems better for wine development.
My 1/(5^2*2) of a dollar.
I've read a bit of the discussion following the suggestion. And what I really like is that the discussion was not a holy-license-war kind of flame, but rather a "techincal" discussion of wether LGPL would allow different enhancments to wine to be done (like the CD-Protection-support of WineX).
For those of you following the development, this was brought up because of Transgaming, several weeks ago. Although, at that time, the plan was GPL.
Personally, I'm not bothered by it. They have a right to do as they wish with the project they created, and LGPL prolly won't harm to much else.
Derek Greene
Can anyone tell me if this is somehow correct:
.. ?
If WINE is LGPL'd then it still can be used to drive closed source programs, but any modifications to WINE itself that cannot be distributed binary only?
But if it can be linked with closed source apps, then someone could extend wine with something like proprietary plugins
I've had some commercial dealings around software which had been GPLed, and from my experience in the world out there, OSS licenses really scare companies, both big and small. I believe that the LPGL is a great half-way house, in that it allows people to create software that makes the most of the platform and libraries which are already available, without necessarily "tainting" (this it the word used whenever I've been involved with license discussions) the code that, in the end, the company wants to sell, and make money from. Although I'd like to see more sofware being free, I think that driving the platform will produce more software full stop, and some of it will be free, which is a start.
The LGPL allows commercial activities on a non-commercial platform, and encourages commercial companies to feed back improvements into the LGPLed code which will improve the quality of the platform. Wine is a major project, and if it moves to LGPL, this should help the license, and by extension, the platform, as well as the availability of software. I'd definitely vote "yes".
I think a change to an LGPL-like license should be done in such a way that commercial efforts like Lindows are still economically feasible (i.e., that they can add value in terms of packaging and add-ons), but that changes and bug fixes to the core WINE functionality are fed back into WINE. If that can be accomplished, then I think a change of WINE to LGPL is the right thing to do. If the WINE license becomes so restrictive as to make any commercial distributions of WINE-based systems uninteresting (because they exclude, for example, commercial add-ons from being bundled), then I think it would harm WINE.
If they chose the LGPL, there still would be the
issue whether to choose v2.0 or v2.1
The latter is called "Lesser" instead of "Library"
and calls itself deprecated due to RMS objections
on non-GPL software.
Yes, read non-GPL, not non-open, not even non-free.
RMS wrote the GPL to exactly achieve the aim that
all software has to be free as in GPL, and so he
invented (or copied?) the viral/tainting thing.
/me votes for MIT or LGPLv2.0
My Karma isn't excellent, damn it! (And
When commercial vendors want to add functionality to their product that is already available, they pay to use that code. It worked great for id Software lisencing their game engines. I could see such a royalties system benefit both parties, as the commercial vendor would have a more robust product, and the WINE project would get valuable funding to support it's open-source endeavors.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
What will this do to Transgaming? They will no longer be able to make changes and keep them to themselves - kind of seems like it destroys their business model.
I guess the only thing they could do is to for Wine themselves and never touch Codweavers code again - but that means that they now have to deal with a completely larger set of problems than they currently are.
Personally I think this is bad for Wine - Transgaming has already given so much back to the Wine project it is not even funny (including the fact that Transgaming is now looking to sponsor some portions of Wine progress) - but this switch is going to create some animosity between the two.
Maybe they should have a dual license - kind of like mysql, where it is GPL, but some companies can license the code and they don't have to contribute back.
It is a tough situation - but let's hope that forward progress does not get stopped because of it!
Derek
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'm quite familiar with the LGPL. Contrary to the Slashdot headline, however, Jeremy is not proposing a move to the LGPL, but to an LGPL-style license.
It was about time wine became free like free beer!!
It's bad enough to /. a site, we've all done it before. But to have a site that basically says "Email Me" is just plain cruel.
/. an email server? :)
Could be the first time we
THe truth hurts doesn't it?
Market economies develop quickest when there is competition. This is economic fact. LGPL/GPL remove any form of this by disabling the ability to make a profit in a competitive manner. So, sure, go ahead and use LGPL and watch Wine become a thing of the past. Any form of the GPL is a virus/plague.
For example, I use OpenBSD at home. Say I wrap up OpenBSD and call it "FooSecure - The World's Most Secure OS" and sell it for a hundred dollars a copy, without making anything but cosmetic changes and closing the source.
Oh, I just thought of a better example. Does the version of OpenBSD that Darren Reed released after that whole ipf debacle have any effect at all on the "original" OpenBSD? I find it tough to believe that Theo is exactly worried, whether Reed's software comes with the source or not.
Oh, and whoever keeps modding my posts Flamebait, GFY. Thanks. It's gonna take a lot more mod points than you've got to get rid of my +1.
--saint
The only resonsibility anyone has under the LGPL is is to provide the modified LGPLed part of Wine to those who;
The only problem I see with this is if a company makes substantial changes to the LGPLed source, and they are unwilling/incapable to seperate the parts they want to keep for themselves into little propriatory modules, they would have an attitude problem.
Since patches to the LGPLed parts could be used as hooks to link in the propriatory modules, it does not seem like a dire problem for a half decient programmer. After all, they get the rest of Wine/Winelib for no dollar cost or effort.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
for the record -
I've had winXP crash so many times it's not funny. Yes, i've seen the BSOD - it doesn't even offer recovery. and i've seen it more than once. how long have i been running XP? a week. All signed drivers, all stable hardware. Still - crashes...i think I just abuse it too much with the programs I run. It isn't as stable as i've found 2K to be. but 3 BSODs in a week, and having to deal with it's 'pretty' colors doesn't make a happy user. me.
on the other hand, i've abused linux mandrake pretty well - and on the same box - so you can't claim hardware is all that's crashing XP. Sure - i can crash processes in linux - but it's pretty hard to take down the kernel. Just my 2c.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Oh, yeah. That's exactly why X as it is comes with that great bastion of usefulness, twm! And great utilities such as xcalc, the xt toolkit crap, and pile-of-shit hacked-on code like xterm.
Dude - everything *good* about X in the past 10 (15?) years has been kept locked away by those proprietary companies you extoll. How many desktops give you the quality experience of Irix's 4DWM? One. Guess why. Then the closest thing they get to interoperating between vendors is that pile of proprietary "Open Group my ass" crap that is CDE / Motif.
The only thing that the BSD/X licenses have done for X and BSD are to ensure that when commercial interests are stealing same, that they all steal the same thing so they interoperate.
(Posting anonymously to preserve precious, precious karma.)
Care to back this up? I think not as there is really no basis for this comment. My experience has been the opposite. Although I've never used XP - and have no plans to do so.
Of course maybe you're a logged in troll and I'm talking to myself...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
To me it always seemed the strangest part of the LGPL license was a requirement to either use shared object libraries or to supply the object files so your propprietary software can be re-linked with a new version of libfoo.a.
Is there an intermediate license which requires that your changes to a library's code be shared, but don't require you to supply the user with the ability to "improve" the program you ship?
The concept of open software and it's use with a corporate, or business, structure is new and many people/companies don't really know what to do with it. We don't know which license works best in a corporate environment. Is that the point? Maybe, maybe not. If Open Software is going to have widespread use and acceptance, it's THE point.
I don't want to speak for anyone else, but personally it would improve my life, both at work and home, if Open Software WAS a staple. I prefer Linux as both a workstation and personal PC OS. It would be helpful if mgmt wasn't resistant to it's use in the workplace and more of the "warm and fuzzy" apps (games, some of the streaming media kinda junk, blah, blah, blah) were available for Linux at home.
So from that standpoint, we need to see which of the Open licenses really works. Being able to establish a revenue model is key for Open Software to really get going in the business world. Right now that points to a BSD-style license.
Yeah, we may have MS "snitching" the BSD TCP/IP stack, but we also now have lote of APPLE users on a BSD-style OS! Who would have thought that was possible a few years ago? That's real progress and it's also bringing the benefits of Open Software to the masses. I'd think even RMS would support that, although he may choke on the BSD license.
On the flip side: IBM is pushing Linux, but how much of that is media/hype based? I'd think the BSD method of development is much more to IBMs liking, not too mention the license! Yet here they are...
Anyway, I wouldn't mind buying a copy of "wine" (or whatever it might be sold as) if I had greater confidence it would work properly and had better documentation. I've played with Wine, and I had some things working, but not everything I needed to make the effort worthwhile. I WAS frustrated with the lack of doc, which contrary to what some people say, I usually find plenty of with the Open Software I typically use (Apache, Tomcat, etc).
I'm NOT ragging on the folks who write Wine, they've done a great job, but I DO think that Wine would benefit from a BSD or LGPL style license.
If anyone cares...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Now, the FSF may argue that it would be illegal for third parties to link my non-GPL code with readline, but this doesn't sound very feasible, and it isn't what is stated in the license.
(Another thing: Now suppose I merely claimed to have written greedline. It'd cost you $10,000,000 to call my bluff)
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The LGPL was originally called the "Library" GPL, and then later on was backronymed to the "Lesser" GPL by RMS.
:)
Its purpose is to allow closed-source applications to use open-source libraries without becoming "infected" by copyleft source publication requirements.
So if you write a C program that links against the LGPL-licenced glibc, you are not forced to adopt copyleft for your program.
If, however, you modify the actual library code, you are required to publish source to your changes.
If WINE were to be LGPL-ed, you could write a program that would run on both Windows and [any x86 OS with a WINE port] by linking against WINE. Your program could be licenced however you wish, as the act of linking against an LGPL-ed resource does not incurr the responsibility of copyleft.
However, if you discovered that you really needed the as-yet WINE-unimplemented Windows API call foo(), and then did the work to implement the foo() call in WINE, the LGPL would force you to release the source to those changes to the public.
This is, IMHO, a REALLY REALLY good idea. The nature of the WINE project is that once a certain core of the API is ported, the rest of the work is really very modular, but very broad. Certain companies have been completing work on various APIs needed to get their pet projects working (like core gaming APIs) and then refusing to turn these changes back in to the core WINE project for "competitive" reasons - ie, if they have the only working version of these core APIs, then only they can publish software that uses these APIs (until someone re-does the port work and releases the API in a Free manner)
Result: uncecessary duplication of effort, and bad feelings all 'round.
I don't contribute to WINE, so I don't get a vote (which is as it should be) but I'm sure as hell cheering for the LGPL people.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Someone who takes and closes source from a BSD-style license is saying is that they don't believe future changes made by the community are worth opening their source for. If that opinion is justified, then the project is screwed. The project is in trouble because the community is not producing -- a problem unlikely to be fixed by changing to an LGPL style license.
What's a sig?
I've used win2k for 8 month straight - software and hardware development, gaming and general everyday junk - and it hasn't crashed once. I can kill individual programs, but the OS is rock solid. I'll admit it was a pain in the ass to get it to work at first (thank you ATI, ABIT, VIA and Creative for the worst a-piece-of-shit-smeared-on-my-screen-would-work-be tter drivers included with my hardware) but ever since then, rock solid performance.
There is a problem with so many of the open source license that we use. They are tailored to "freeware". There needs to be more emphasis on creating new license that open up the code, yet insure that the person or company has a way to make money from it, and make money from making programs that shared libaries.
This world is ran with money. People do need to eat. And there needs to be more emphasis on open source, and less on free software.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
I dorked with transgaming's wine not too long ago. As I recall, I was absolutely sickened to learn that it could not be installed system-wide ala the REAL wine, but had to be installed individually into each users home directory.
Requiring each user to install it separately on a system (multiple installs of the same damn app) is BOGUS. Have they changed their ways or is it still broken this way? You want to use it and play a game? Well install the big-ass app into your home directory AND install the frickin' game there too. Hundreds of wasted megabytes.
IS there a way to install it system-wide (/usr/local) so any user can use it instead of wasting lots and lots of HDD space on duplicated installs?
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I've been running XP since WAY back, the only times is has crashed was when I forgot to turn off advanced power management when using SiceNT, i.e. no fault of XP, since XP runs on-top of SiceNT.
And...you have no problem with M$ spying on you, telling you what software you can copy, what you can and cannot do to your hardware, etc. Send me all your vitals too, since you have no problem with that: full name, place of birth, date of birth, social security number (or equivalent), credit card numbers, personal likes and dislikes, sexual proclivities, shopping habits, what places you frequent and the times.
I assure you I am no worse than Gates and Co so you can feel happy and complacent about giving me all your info. Also, you need to contact be to get my OK to upgrade/change any of your computer hardware in the future.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I just think this contribution to the Wine lists is especially interesting, and deserves to be quoted here:
On Thu, 7 Feb 2002, Dan Kegel wrote:
> It's about time. Putting Wine under the xGPL is the best way
> I can think of to ensure its future. The xGPL makes it possible
> for competitors to cooperate for their common good - which is pretty amazing.
This is a fundamental point which we haven't had a chance of discussing
last time as we argued over silly future (unlikely) possible changes in
copyright law.
One important argument was that building a thriving economic environment
around Wine is essential for its success.
Everybody agreed on this premise, IIRC.
The argument followed that BSD license is better for creating such an
environment, and hence better for Wine, since more business will
contribute more code back.
This, I'm afraid, is entirely false.
I argue that in fact, the BSD license is a STRONG DETERANT for businesses
to contribute code back, while the LGPL provides an INCENTIVE.
Note that I do not care, for the purpose of this discussion, about
businesses which don't intend to contribute code back. They are of no help
to Wine, and thus irrelevant (if not a little harmful, for reasons so
eloquently explained by Alexandre).
A BSD license is a STRONG DETERANT for a business to contribute code
back. The reason for this is that they have no guarantee that another
business will not improve a little the code, and thus get a competitive
advantage. Or that other companies will not use that code on top of the
code they wrote but not released, and thus again, get that edge. This is a
fantastic _deterant_ for releasing code back. In fact, Gav validated
exactly this point when he tried to argue for the BSD license last time:
But there are companies out there who will benefit significantly
from commercial use of this code, and who can afford to sponsor a
portion of the development cost. Until such a sponsorship happens,
we cannot apply the WineHQ license to that code.
In other words, they needed that code. They invested some money do get
it. They are happy with the results. Why not release the code? They have
what they needed in the first place? The reason is clear -- it cost them
to get there, they can not aford to bring everybody there for free. I can
100% understand that. But if the code was under the LGPL, it would not
matter, because even if they brought everybody there, other companies
could not step ahead of them, since if they did, they themselves could
have used that code.
In other words, TG could have kept Direct3D proprietary, released
everything else back under LGPL, and they could have _known_ they still
have the competitive edge in the D3D work! This is why the LGPL is in fact
an _incentive_ for such colaboration.
Bottom line is clear: as the project matures and becomes more useful, the
deterant of contributing code back from a business perspective is going to
greatly increase, while at the same time, the incentive under the LGPL
would have also increased.
In economic terms, for Wine, one spells death, the other, life.
--
Dimi.
Ok, here's a way that should work...
/usr/local/wine_drive
/usr/local/wine_drive
/usr/local/wine_drive
create
chmod it 777 so everyone has access
install wine / transgaming's wine
for each user, create symlink ~/.wine ->
~/.transgaming - >
Hey presto, one central wine installation everyone uses.
If you follow the link you will see that what type of license is finally selected is still very much up in the air. An X11-style license/mixed license is one of the latest suggestions. X11-like license for the kernel side, so if any closed stuff must be included for functionality it can but any dlls/libs beyond that would be LGPL.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Perhaps this stems from my lack of understanding of LGPL, but I don't see how this really keeps anybody who is determined to take their proprietary mods to themselves. If you need foo() and foo() is broken or missing in the library, you just create a wrapper library which has your implementation of foo and just hands off to WINE for everything else. It might not be a bad way in general to deal with the incompatibilities of WINE and WIN32.
It seems to m that at best it gives the engineers (who tend to understand better the contributions of the community) an excuse to keep their employers from freeloading. Or it may cause some people with vestigal senses of fairness to balk. The intent of GPL and LGPL, as I read them, is to create a kind of social contract between the creators of software and people who would modify and redistribute it, that ensures fairness through the mechanism of granting certain inalienable rights to the user. To work around the limitations of LGPL would require a deliberate act to disrupt this fairness, something which people might scruple not to do where they might not scruple given a license had in implicit invitation to do so.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
My experience has been the opposite. Although I've never used XP
Er... this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, I'm afraid. On what, then, are you basing this experience. W2K alone?
(Haven't used XP myself. The cussing from the next cubicle over dissuades me.)
--saint
While I haven't really decided whether or not I personally support LGPL for Wine, I haven't seen the opposing viewpoint posted at all, so I thought I'd just post the link to why GNU backronymed LGPL to "Lesser".
Basically, they argue that releasing code under GPL encourages more free (not as in beer) software development.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I'm not sure they could change the license away from GPL, at least the code they already have written. The old code is GPL and must stay GPL according to the termps of the GPL. And if I remember correctly, any code that uses GPL code must also then be GPL. So that means any future versions of Wine (unless started over from scratch) must continue to be GPL.
I think that's what they mean by "viral licensing."
Anti-Microsoft GPL ...
Beer is going to sponsor GPL.
A spokesperson for Budwieser commented that there would be no way they would sponsor anything other. "LGPL? Let WINE sponsor it, Beer is a manly drink. We won't deal with the (L)ady GNU Public License."
In other news, Alexandre Julliard has stated that they plan to begin advertising WINE during LPGA games.
Well...I've never been a wine fan (it really sucks in emulating an already broken OS, and it barely runs on linux), but the motivation behind it's license was precisely to push companies to contribute to the project and gain some money in the process.
Lindows, of course is not playing fair, but this will not necessarily mean they will contribute to wine..after all..who will buy Lindows if it doesn't add any value?
I think codeweavers should just fork and make Lindows pay for the code if they want to use it.
I develop a really cool application. As it's really cool and free software, people flock to it in droves. Unfortunately, some of these people are motherfucking ideologues who would rather engage in some sort of never-ending pissing contest about whose license is the best rather than let me just do my programming thing and be done with it.
Why are so many fucking programmers wasting what precious little time and brainpower they've got debating piddly shit no one cares about? Might change to the LGPL? Who the fuck cares? Just do it and be done with it if you want to.
Christ. You shouldn't have to raise your hand and wait for RMS to call your name to go take a shit.
You spelled Jeremy two different ways in the discussion. Hint: The first one is wrong.
Why should I care? Well, his name is my name too, and I get pretty sick of people misspelling it.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
www.willows.com , it's even multiplatform
Frankly, *anyone* that uses the LGPL is asking for trouble.
Stallman hates the LGPL. He wants everyone to use the GPL. He also has the ability to alter the LGPL -- which you've just licensed your software under. He could convert the LGPL to the GPL at any point.
... I've had Linux crash on me more than XP...
I was under the impression that you were not allowed to link your program to an LGPLed library - you are only allowed to dynamically bind it to it.
I think this is to ensure that the user can still recompile the LGPLed bit for herself if she needs to.
Ironically, think of the BSD licenses as being gift-culture-centric: when the programmer gives away their work, they have no control over how their gift is used.
The GPL licenses are more of an exchange-culture approach: I give you my code in return for you giving me any code you modify or add to it (if you ever redistribute it).
--LP, putting a different twist on ESR's anthropological gift/exchange culture analogies
P.S. To address your question more specifically, the GPL is basically forced sharing. It inhibits leeching a free resource, which may or may not yield more freedom for a creator, contributor or user of the resource, depending on their goals.
The GPL does raise the costs (barriers to entry) of someone using the 'embrace, extend, extinguish' strategy against you based on the software you built (see: BSD TCP/IP stack). Of course, neither approach eliminates it.
Yeah, or you just cp your global wine config to ~/.wine/config & ~/.transgaming/config. - You set up your wine directories/drives in there.
when everything is working perfectly.. BREAK SOMETHING before something else FUCKS up!
If WINE is placed under a restrictive license (and both the GPL and the LGPL are highly restrictive compared to the current licensing), it's time to do what the OpenBSD/OpenSSH crowd did with SSH: Create a truly free version of WINE that isn't covered by a nasty license that's specifically intended to prevent free use of the code. It's a shame to have to do a fork, but it is the only way to keep WINE truly free. I have just downloaded the latest version of the code, just in case Jeremy & Co. attempt to make it unavailable. OpenWINE, anyone?
I would say the "recent events" were most definitely related to Lindows and its use of wine.
Lindows *does* use wine, KDE, linux kernel and all the rest, but the funny thing is that all of this really underplayed by the company. They try and give the impression that they have their own OS or something. They don't at all. It's all linux kernel, KDE, and WINE with some of their own proprietary code thrown in somewhere, most likely part of the install/config process and additions to WINE to get it to work with their list of Windows apps they're trying to run.
I think it's perfectly fine if they use WINE, and whatknot *but* only if they give credit where it's due and contribute back to the work they are getting for free.
At least RedHat has made significant contributions to open source and (as far as I know) still keep everything open. Lindows gives the impression of being much more exploitative, especially if they're not planning on opening up their proprietary changes to WINE.
This isn't to totally slam Lindows and assume the worst of them, but there is a potential for abuse here. The way to prevent this is to have WINE use a GPL style license. This is one time where I actually appreciate whole FSF creed and see where it's necessary.
This could go either way... a company tries to exploit open source for it's own ends without giving anything back, flames out and then just basically rips everyone involved off...
OR
Lindows does a lot of good work on UI, desktop, and windows emulation and gives it back to the open source community to benefit all, not just Lindows.
I'm hoping for the second...
Time for some more of that Conspiracy Theory stuff:
The recent rumours that AOL was looking to buy redhat... There is usually something behind the smoke...
What if AOL was looking for a distro to use for their settop boxes (or easily installed on a standard PC). A disto that can have Wine installed on it.
A distro that AOL can use with wine, and minimal changes to their AOL client would allow them a VERY quick deployment of a Linux based installation of an AOL client.
A distro that can be bundled with Wine+the client in a single install.
Or... A client+wine package that can be installed on any distro that the standard users would be familiar with.....
--
You may be paranoid, but that does not mean that they are not after you.... --Someone on IRC somwhere..
--
Time is on my side
Here's why. As most people already know, the GPL and LGPL require developers who create "derivative works" to give their work away for free. But what most people do not understand is that if a programmer so much as looks at GPLed or LGPLed code, and later writes some code that performs the same function, he or she is open to accusations that the code produced later is a derivative work. (The late ex-Beatle George Harrison fell into a similar trap when he heard a song and, years later, wrote one with a similar melody. A court convicted him of "unconscious" copyright infringement because he'd heard the original song.)
For this reason, commercial programmers simply cannot look at source code that's published under one of the FSF's licenses without taking a tremendous risk which could destroy their careers as programmers. This may be fine with Richard Stallman -- who in the GNU Manifesto stated that programmers should code for love rather than money and that good salaries for programmers should be "banned" -- but for those of us who need to put food on the table it is simply a risk we cannot take.
Thus, if WINE is GPLed, I can no longer look at the code, fix bugs when something breaks, or contribute to the project. Nor can I peruse the code in order to learn from it. It will, effectively, be as closed as a closed source product to me and to any other commercial programmer. WINE will be un-free, and only a truly free fork (which I sincerely hope will occur if CodeWeavers attempts to change the license) will be accessible to those who want to code for a living.
I don't like this, it is another license, and as far as I can tell the vast majority of people writing LGPL would be happy with this modification. I wish there was an official modification of LGPL to say this.
The CodeWeavers seem to have losing their money on non-existant business model, and now they are looking into recruiting the whole community to work for them for free...
It is not because their company wants to keep Wine free, it is because they want to stop compeitirs from producing more successfull product.
Both Microsoft and Apple have contributed back to or supported BSD. Apple is giving code back, Microsoft is releasing .NET for FreeBSD.
The World is Yours.
Ouch, my head hurts after trying to read that thing.
Something is wrong with the world when computing is more about legal document than writing code and fiddling with electronic gadgets.
Sometimes I think that GNU just makes matters worse by adding another layer of complexity.
You're right. One of the fundamental freedoms that users of open source should possess is "freedom from FUD." They should have confidence that they are able to use code in the way that they expect, and that they understand all of the terms and implications of the license.
Neither the GPL nor the LGPL provides this. Each begins with a political manifesto, then moves on to a license, rife with legalese, that the FSF itself admits has never been fully interpreted by a court. Even within the FSF's own ranks there are disagreements as to what the language means.
The BSD License is short, clear, and unambiguous. There's no FUD -- no question about what it means. And it has been tested and ruled to be valid in a court of law.
Licensing WINE under the (L)GPL would do more than infect it with an intentionally malicious, viral license.
It would infect it with FUD.
"A distro that AOL can use with wine, and minimal changes to their AOL client would allow them a VERY quick deployment of a Linux based installation of an AOL client. "
If they ever decide to use thier own browser [Netscape/Mozilla] that would allow a very quick deployment on just about any OS. The only thing they would need Wine for is proprietary plug-ins [ala Codeweavers], so your argument does have merit.
They're locked into Windows by their own decision (they're no longer legally bound by contract) to continue to buy IE even though they make thier own browser. It absolutely boggles me.
It's like if Chrysler decided to use all GM 4-cylinder engines in thier cars while they continue to manufacture their own engines and sell them to Mitsubishi (as they do) all the while complaining about GM's 'monopoly' and how they are 'being forced out of the market, per say.
This rant is running off-topic, but it completely blows my mind how AOL could complain about MS monopoly while at the same time contributing to it by using IE all the while they have their own browser which they don't use, have never used, nor have any intention to ever use (no AOL person has ever made any public statment that they ever intend not to use IE in thier PC AOL client -- they 'hinted' at perhaps using Gecko in their mythical 'web applicance', which I don't see happening any time soon.)
Can anyone shed any light on WTF AOL is thinking and [back on-topic] how this could relate to wine?
Which is better depends on what you think is important. But the belief that the BSD license is "more free", as espoused by some here, is not a universal notion.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Anyone ever get the opinion that Ringbarer was dateraped by a dyslexic? Right up the bared ring :D
So I guess your just a lazy cunt with a spell checker then. Jizzmopper.
I think this is offtopic, so you're lucky. They're discussing switching to LGPL which has no disadvantage that the BSD licence doesn't also have. Though it would seem slightly hard to define "based on" and "uses".
Still the fundamental principal is nice, you have to change a lot, and add stuff to make money, which encourages creativity, or open source.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
as you open source people keep bickering over license garbage, open source will continue to fail. Try focusing on making your software decent and useable instead.
The BSD License was ruled to be valid -- and enforced! -- during the lawsuit between AT&T's (later Novell's) Unix System Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley over the distribution of BSD. The University successfully claimed that AT&T had violated the BSD License by failing to credit the contributors to the BSD code . The claim carried such weight that it forced a court-approved settlement in which USL capitulated.
wine may turn to water
In the story, a bird lays an egg and then convinces a kindly elephant named Horton to sit on it. Horton braves all manner of hardships -- heat, hold, even the indignity of being captured and displayed as a freak in a circus -- to remain with his charge until it hatches.
Whereupon, the bird immediately demands that Horton return the fruits of his labor to her.
Were she a modern Richard Stallman, she might have declared that it was a GPLed egg.
Writing a program -- like laying an egg -- isn't necessarily an easy task. However, bringing it to the marketplace and successfully selling it as a product -- especially in the presence of a free alternative -- is a much more difficult and dangerous one. The company that hopes to sell a product that's an improved derivative of one that's available for free is taking a big risk and must make a truly Hortonian (if I may coin the phrase) effort to be successful.
What Mr. Stallman and the GPL would ask is that the person who manages to do this -- against all odds -- get nothing.
CodeWeavers appears to believe that the emergence of products such as Lindows is a threat to it and/or to WINE. Nothing could be further from the truth. If the creators of such projects act in their own best interests, they will return all but the most strategically important code from their implementations to the WINE project, reserving for themselves only what is necessary to differentiate their product from what another vendor (e.g. Red Hat) might produce. This minimizes their maintenance costs, and may -- there's no sure thing here -- provide them with sufficient value added to survive in the presence of a free alternative.
To (L)GPL WINE, on the other hand, prevents such worthy products from ever seeing the light of day. It is, in essence, snatching back the egg from poor Horton after all of his hard work. And it won't benefit WINE or CodeWeavers. The companies' potential contributions will be lost, and CodeWeavers and WINE will gain them a reputation for being hostile to business. This will cause the consulting business from which CodeWeavers hopes to make money to dry up.
In short, the move is shortsighted and bad for all concerned.
CodeWeavers should look instead to the model of Wasabi Systems (http://www.wasabisystems.com/), which just received a round of venture capital funding worth more than $1M to port, publish, promote, and consult on NetBSD. NetBSD is truly free; it's published not under the restrictive GPL or LGPL but under the BSD License. And Wasabi is going strong; they just published a desktop package (consisting of NetBSD plus GUIs and applications) that is competitive with the best of the Linux distributions.
However, even without this, a switch to LGPL would be quite beneficial. The Wine project is otherwise going to get jacked by projects like Lindows and similar.
As long as I can run certain Windows apps (like some multimedia demos) in wine, and can have wine-based things like kylix.
I believe porting delphi to linux/wine is mostly a lot of tweaking and fixing the rough edges in both delphi and wine (plus writing linux-specific things like CLX). If a lot of code need to be written for wine, this won't be economically feasible for borland. Therefore, I don't think borland would care too much about whether or not open-source the small amount of changes in wine, compared to the tons of code in delphi/kylix. They just want to get kylix running and sold.
Quite a few other wine-based commercial apps are in the similar situation.
As for wine as a standalone application, LGPL might be better. How much of wine is currently commercially contributed? Not much, IMHO. Changing to LGPL might not do much benefit, but it surely will not do much harm here.
...any more than Linux is being "jacked" by Red Hat. Both are trying to add value -- something which they must do in order to sell product, because the code is available at no cost.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ve have vays of making you submit patches!
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
No but you can turn openbsd.org into suckers. That what happens when someone steals your code and makes cash on it.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
I thought their open debate was interesting enough that I submitted it here on Slashdot. However, the issue is now dead. They are NOT changing to the LGPL. Please leave the WINE coders alone and let them write code. They deserve credit for having a very civil and constructive debate about licensing issues, in a climate where flamewars are the rule when the issue gets brought up. WINE coders are not only excellent programmers, but they are also wise for having settled the issue. This "Jeremy" may be a smart guy, but his position lost out. Him trying to stoke up the issue and cause dissention in the improbably civil WINE community does not seem very smart to me. Last year was the time to discuss this. Now is the time to shut up and code.
I love the way you say shitblister, can I get you to mop my jizz?
AOL is supposedly making a AOL/Tivo thing that will allow web browsing, email, and instant messaging. All running on Linux.
All I have to do is implement the Windows API call foo() in my own library, rather than in the context of the WINE library, and then I don't have to disclose it.
So it seems your argument doesn't fly.